When I look back at photos of Carla at age three months, or six months, or ten months, or twelve months or eighteen or twenty-four or ANY of the months preceding this one, I feel such a painful longing for Carla of the past that it is almost hard to bear.

But the way I feel about RIGHT NOW is so intense that I know Future Me is going to have a very rough time looking back at photos of Today.

It feels like being in love, I think. Like, I can’t stand to not be with her. When she’s asleep, I miss her. (That DOES happen, if infrequently.) When I’m in a room with her, I’m often staring at her with a goopy lovesick expression splashed all over my face; if I were in a cartoon, my eyes would be replaced by big red hearts.

My husband – less demonstrative than I am, much MUCH less verbally effusive – feels similarly. I can see it on his face. We kiss her good night before we adjourn to bed and spend a few minutes just looking at her, tucking a tendril of curl behind her ear, smoothing a finger over the soft cheek.

“I can’t believe we MADE her!” I say to my husband, awash in wonderment, like it just happened yesterday. (I mean EW, but I do say that, and I do feel wonderment and awe.)

Three (or, to be accurate, the tail end of Two) is magical.

Carla says “eventually” and “actually” correctly in a sentence, and the earnestness with which she pops these qualifiers into her speech makes me laugh almost every time.

She loves puzzles, running, singing, making lemon soup and other delicacies in her play kitchen, any and all TV, swinging, dancing, hopping on one foot, sliding, hitting her T-ball in the backyard, reading, jumping on and over and across things, cutting play-doh with (play) scissors, swimming, watching tennis, and pretty much anything active.

More than anything in the world, she loves dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, soft dogs, wiry dogs. Dogs hanging out of car windows, dogs walking down the sidewalk, dogs getting their hair cut at PetSmart, dogs lounging on lawns. All of them.

It was surprising, then, the other morning when – after asking to watch a kitty cat video on my phone – she said with such heartfelt longing if we could “bring a cat into my house so I can hug it and snuggle it.” I’ll tell you what, I almost went right out and got her a cat, despite my severe allergies.

She has strong opinions about everything, from what she likes and doesn’t like to eat to where someone should sit to what she should wear to school. One day, we had a long discussion about whether our friend Jack’s name was really “Jack” (my vote) or “Jax” (her vote, and the ultimate ruling). When I told her that in fact Jack’s name was actually “John” and not “Jack” at all, it really blew her mind.

A current obsession is counting things. Whenever you ask Carla how many of something (strawberries, blocks, crayons, blueberries, cheese crackers, minutes until bedtime) she’d like, she says, without hesitation, “Five.” She counts anything that can be counted, from bites of pancake to windowpanes to the caps in Caps for Sale. With some skipping of or confusion with fifteen and sixteen, she can count all the way to thirty.

Fruit remains a staple in her diet, with blueberries topping the list of favorites. Strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries follow, but apricots, peaches, oranges, bananas, kiwi, plums, and nectarines are not far behind. She does NOT like melon. (Fine by me. Melon is an abomination.) She loves pancakes and french toast sticks for breakfast. For veggies, she loves pickles and capers, occasional carrots. Green beans and broccoli top her list of dinner-veggies, and she will even eat them raw (frozen). Peas and corn, sometimes. Same with yams. Fish sticks, tacos, pizza, meatballs, and chicken nuggets are usually eaten and enjoyed. PBJ sandwiches are a good anytime food, same with raw ham and cheese crackers (Cheez Its). She still eats yogurt and applesauce daily (although not as much yogurt as I’d like her to).

I think her favorite food of all is chips. Or maybe ice cream. She is confident ordering both: the former in our local Mexican restaurant, only very rarely with guacamole; the latter anywhere ice cream is sold, even at the previously-mentioned Mexican establishment. Her long-time go-to has been vanilla ice cream with sprinkles (jimmies), but lately she has been asking for rainbow ice cream.

She requested very specifically a vanilla cake with blueberries and vanilla frosting for her birthday. But ask her what she wants for her birthday dinner, and she responds, “Dinner? For my birthday?” as though the concept doesn’t compute.

Her favorite conversation topic of late is a thorough recounting of what happened during the day. “Tell me about your day, Daddy,” she will ask at dinner, and then when he pauses in a sentence, she turns to me: “Tell me about your day, Mommy.” She particularly likes us to tell her about special days – like the time we went to the zoo and saw not only a person dressed up like a cookie, but then ran into some family friends and went on to spend a lovely afternoon together.

More often than not, I am “Mom” and her father is “Dad,” which I am trying to resist. I still wish I was “Mama.”

She is at that stage where she expresses her love freely and loudly: “I just love you so much, Daddy!” she’ll crow, throwing her arms around him.

She still has a few baby words left: mixing up “lemon” and “melon” (which results in the delightful “waterlemon”) and saying “am-ih-lo” instead of “animal” (although “squir-lahs” are now clearly “squirrels.”) and calling “yellow” “lellow.” She has recently taken to calling her grandfather’s slippers “bumpers” (because of the anti-skid bumps on the bottom). I often say to her, “I love you more than all the stars in the sky” and her responses crack me up. Once, she said, “I love you more than all the pants on the ground.” “I think you mean plants?” “No, I mean pants.”

The other day, we were playing in the yard. We have an enormous tree back there – so big it would crush our house to smithereens should it decide to tip over – and Carla decided she was going to climb it. She managed to get maybe a foot off the ground and kind of hung there. “I think it’s too tall for me to climb, Mommy,” she called back. Cheerfully resigned, she dropped down and commenced running in circles, laughing with joy.

She has the most magnificent dandelion puff of blonde curls. I think it’s the perfect reflection of her personality. Beautiful, light as air, untamable, gleeful, fun.

I cannot wait to see what she does next.